With news seeping out this evening that XYZ.com’s latest marketing blitz has very possibly added half a million domains to its .xyz gTLD today, I thought I’d knock out some data on the previous largest one-day growth spikes in new gTLDs.

With some caveats, which I’ll get to, I think these might be the top 10 growth days for new gTLDs.

TLD

Date

Growth (domains)

top

2016-02-16

238,616

wang

2016-03-02

175,900

bid

2016-02-18

145,330

wang

2016-03-03

137,313

xyz

2016-02-07

131,375

site

2016-02-24

120,275

xyz

2015-11-01

111,160

xn--ses554g (.网址)

2015-01-07

109,763

wang

2016-03-01

107,599

xn--ses554g (.网址)

2015-01-06

104,548

They’re the only 10 spikes of over 100,000 domains I could confirm in the DI PRO database, at least in 2012-round gTLDs.

XYZ is celebrating its second anniversary of general availability tomorrow, and has invested several million bucks in promotions on registrars which are in turn selling .xyz names for as little as a penny apiece.

As mentioned, there are some caveats to the data in the table above.

It’s based on the zone files published daily by ICANN’s Centralized Zone Data Service, which can be patchy.

CZDS is set up in such a way that each user has missing days here and there, and it has in the not too distant past had a tendency to balk when it receives an unexpectedly large zone file.

In other words, there’s a pretty good chance I’ve missed some spikes, but I’m confident there’s nothing else approaching 400,000 in a day.

UPDATE: .vip should be on the table, with a one-day spike of 115,245 on May 18 2016.

Leading Chinese registrar West.cn has said it will subsidize .xyz renewals to the tune of $1.5 million.

According to a West.cn press release, CEO He Xiaojiang made the announcement alongside XYZ.com counterpart Daniel Negari at meeting in Beijing on Friday.

The registrar’s .xyz customers “are going to get high rebate back from West.cn so that they can get very low renewal fees”, according to a translation of the original Chinese.

The subsidized renewal price, which starts in June, will be RMB 18 ($2.73), according to the company.

That’s about a $7 discount on West.cn’s usual renewal price of RMB 64.

First-year .xyz prices at the registrar are currently RMB 8 ($1.22).

West.cn is believed to have well over a million .xyz domains on its books. With over a third market share, it’s XYZ.com’s biggest registrar.

The press release points out that West.cn is not getting a special rate from XYZ (which would be against ICANN rules).

Negari declined to elaborate on the specifics of the subsidy.

But in what is no doubt a related move, he told DomainInvesting.com yesterday that XYZ has “reserved several million dollars to be spent with registrars and on advertising platforms for our 2 year anniversary”.

This ad spend will be made over the month of June, he said, to coincide with the June 2, 2014 general availability launch of .xyz.

Fifty registrars are participating, he said, calling it the “biggest sale” the industry has seen.

Whether through heavily discounted renewals or bargain first-year regs, it seems the company is set on making sure its DUM volume does not dip as its anniversary approaches.

It’s not unusual for registries to do special offers to coincide with launch birthdays.

.xyz currently has about 2.8 million registered domains, but about 1.8 million of those were registered after June 2015 and are not in need of renewal before the promotion period expires (though registrants can of course renew whenever they like).

I am pleased to report that the recent case filed by Verisign against CentralNic, Ltd., XYZ and myself has been settled. After looking at the claims in dispute, we regret that as a result of our acquisition of the .theatre, .security and .protection extensions and our arrangement for CentralNic to serve as the backend service provider for these extensions, that Verisign was prevented from the opportunity to pursue monetization of those relationships. As ICANN’s new gTLD program continues to evolve, we would caution others who find themselves in similar situations to be mindful of the existing contracts extension owners may have with third parties.

Registries changing their minds about their back-end provider is not unheard of.

In this case, large portions of Verisign’s final amended complaint were redacted, suggesting some peculiarities to this particular switch.

If there was a monetary component to the settlement, it was not disclosed. The original Verisign complaint had demanded damages of over $2 million.